I woke at 4am today, feeling thoroughly chilled. I got up and put an extra cover on, but that didn’t help, so I found a hot water bottle, which did help. When I woke again, it was to discover that the hot water bottle had sprung a leak, the end of the bed was soaked.

That dealt with, I came upstairs for breakfast; it didn’t feel very warm – the heating wasn’t working. I went for a look in the chaufferie, where the “working bits” are, but all was silent and I was none the wiser, so I phoned the heating engineers (fortunately I took out a service contract earlier in the year), who will send someone round early next week.

It’s not desperately cold at the moment, so I can just light the wood burner in the daytime as well as the evenings; however, a lot of my remaining firewood is logs that are too big for the stove – they need splitting. I do have a log splitter, so I dragged it out and plugged it in. It’s not my favourite tool; it’s so powerful, it scares me, so I push the button and run away.  It made all the right noises, but nothing else happened; no movement of the two ends to split the log I’d put in. Humph! Maybe if I move the pile of logs around, I’ll find enough smallish ones. Kieran’s coming over this week ; I suspect the splitter just needs cleaning and lubricating – I hope so.

Not a great day so far!